"In My Makers Image" Scenario

[BouncyCaitian]

I'm going to be posting a exploration/first contact adventure in the next day or so that should be suitable for TOS Era+ crews. It will involve going out past Federation boundries, a fair amount of science & other space oddities along the way. As well as contacting a collection of species which will throw the Prime Directive on it's collective ear and give the characters a fair amount of philosophsing as to what to do with the aliens they encounter.

The outline will be posted in the next few hours

[BouncyCaitian]

Section One: “Beyond The Farthest Star”

The Ships Crew has been assigned to the Galactic ‘Northern’ trailing edge of Federation Space for light patrol duties combine with research along the Federation Galactic Survey Boundaries, some hundred odd light years near “The Wall of Night” (the edge of the Galactic Spiral Arm) to examine effects of various gravitational anomalies have on planetary and local system development. As the ship is exceptionally far from the normal Federation Communications Network (consisting of Epsilon-Class Communications Platforms), real time communication is out of the question, with Starfleet and the Federation itself is several weeks, if not months off. The GM should build up the sense of isolation for the players and crew by making this felt, if in indirect ways, such as:

Message bursts from Starfleet coming in erratically due to distance, requiring shorter messages, usually in text to allow for more efficient transmission

A crew member may get melancholy being ‘far from home’. Bolians are particularly good for this.

An accident making an NPC that may be normally antagonistic relent and work hard with the PC’s to fix a problem. If asked, the NPC will reply, “We’ve got no one else out here. We’re all we got to cover each others backs.”

The nature of space along “The Wall Of Night” is by in large normal, but there are a few perversities which will get the player’s attention.

1. A rather large amount of gravitational distortions within 200 LY of the ‘edge’ of the spiral arm. This will lead to a flat +5 to +10 to all TN while making Navigation or Science rolls involving data that could be affected by gravity (light being bent slightly, mass readings, etc.) while in the area. While negligible for planetary scale objects, it will make maneuvering in warp powered starships rather annoying. Feel free to play up the sounds of the ships structural members creaking as the ship’s SIF compensates for the distortions, and have the ship rock somewhat. For aquatic based species aboard ship, this will actually remind them of being beneath the waves and morale may improve. For dry land species, the results may be less than pleasant (sea-sickness anyone?)

2. Subspace Radio is also affected by the nature of the area. Communications officers will suffer a +5 to all TN’s using subspace communications as the signal has to fight being distorted by gravitational bleed into subspace.

3. The ships engineer may occasionally need to draw extra power to compensate for the gravitation ‘tides’. Again, normally not a problem. But if the ship gets into combat, this could be problematical.

Eventually, orders will come through from Starfleet Command. Unfortunately they are badly garbled and it will require a bit of computer time and a TN 15 Operations: Communications from the ships communications officer to decompile the message into something intelligible. The message is as follows:

FROM: ADMR. M’NASS, COMMANDING OFFICER, STARFLEET EXPLORITORY COMMAND, FAR STARS ADMINSTRATIVE SECTOR
TO: (Ship’s commanding officer, Ship Identifier, Sector)

PRIORITY TWO

RE: LOST STARSHIP

YOU ARE ORDERED TO DISPENSE WITH CURRENT DUTIES AND ENGAGE IN A SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATION FOR THE CREW OF THE U.S.S. HAWKING (NEBULA-CLASS EXPLORER, NCC-65745), EXPLORING 200 STANDARD LY PAST YOUR POSITION AT LAST KNOWN POSITION AT 75x216, RIGHT ASCENSION GALACTIC PLANE. LAST KNOWN CONTACT WITH U.S.S HAWKING AT PLUS 26 STANDARD DAYS ADJUSTED. LAST CHECK IN TIME MISSED PLUS 24 STANDARD DAYS ADJUSTED.

YOUR ORDERS ARE TO DETERMINE U.S.S HAWKINGS DISPOSITION AS WELL AS THAT OF IT’S CREW AND RENDER ASSISTANCE AS NEEDED. IF THE SHIP IS LOST OR DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES FOR PREVENTION OF CULTURAL CONTAMINATION ARE IN FORCE.

GOOD LUCK AND FAIR SAILING.

SIGNED: ADMR. M’NASS, COMMANDING OFFICER, STARFLEET EXPLORITORY COMMAND, FAR STARS ADMINSTRATIVE SECTOR.

MESSAGE ENDS.

At this point, the crew should be looking up the Hawking’s previous mission assignment and logs from the Starfleet microburst. They will find the ship was fitted with a long-range sensor pod, fitted with special sensors designed to detect and catalog gravitational anomalies for use by later starships. Of particular note, there have been an unusual instance on momentary micro-singularity signatures near solar systems along the Wall of Night in an area roughly 500LY by 150 LY by 700 LY detected by the Hawking. Analysis by the Hawking’s science officer has not indicated that the micro singularities are of an previously unknown type and the Hawking was proceeding on course towards one of the systems they could get a relatively clear reading from sensors.

Further deep scan analysis of fragmentary by Starfleet Command science teams have indicated that the system the Hawking was heading towards has shown signs of old-style radio transmission and potential habitation, but further supposition was inconclusive due to data corruption. How the Players handle this is up to them, but Ship’s Communications will be working at attempting to decompile and defragment what few transmissions components they have received to begin a translation matrix for the ship’s UT.

[BouncyCaitian]

Section Two: “Glittering in the Darkness, Near A Tannhauser Gate”

As the player’s vessel move in deeper to unknown territory and ride the gravitational tides, they will start getting used the sudden lurches in the ship’s course and spend a fair amount of time re-adjusting various systems aboard ship. While no catastrophic failures or losses of any major systems should result, the characters will be pulling longer hours just keeping the ship running properly and a healthy respect for the Hawking’s crew (who’d been in the area for roughly seven times as long) should be a result.

After a week or so of this the ship should eventually ride out the ‘tides’ and come into a quiet area of space near where the Hawking’s course has lead them. They come out about .5LY from the system’s Oort Cloud and can easily pick up the Hawking’s warp trail leading towards the system. They will be picking up a large amount of advanced radio, laser, maser, and other pre-subspace traffic from the systems secondary and tertiary planets, as well as radio traffic from areas in the systems asteroid belt. Which should give the player’s pause as the Hawking has apparently wandered into an advanced space-going society that has dominated at the very least it’s own system and hasn’t reported back.

At this point a full scan of the system by the ships crew would be in order. All tests will be at Moderate difficulty (as some guesswork is involved) but the following things will be gleaned from scans after three days of work:

1. The local sophonts refer to the home system as Dornathant and themselves as Dornathantii. Dornathant I is a plasmacised gas giant that is loosing part of it’s mass to the local sun. Dornathant II (Annah) appears to be a warm terrestrial, heavily populated world with large city metroplexes scattered across the surface and a considerable starlift capacity at bases scattered across the world, as well as spacedocks in orbit. Dornathant III (Doyahn) appears considerably less developed and appears far more developed as an agrarian colony, with a large-airless moon being strip mined for resources. Dornathant IV is a nasty, acidic ball of hydrofluoric acid rain, carbon dioxide and slurried metals that the inhabitants of the system have set up mining operations on. Dornathant V appears to be little more than captured asteroid from the Oort Cloud some several thousand km in diameter.

2. The Dornathantii appear to be composed of several species, but most predominantly a felinoid species with a relatively mild temperament. Some might notice the facial structure more resembles that of the terran Felis Catus than of the Pantera genus structure of the Kzinti of Caitians.

3. There is absolutely no sign of subspace fields of any kind anywhere in the system. Including the Hawkings, which should be cause for some concern. What is noticed is that the Dornathantii appear to be using a Fusion chemical reaction drive for most of their vessels as well as Kinetic gravity whip maneuvers to propel ships between planets.

4. Most system traffic, after three days of analysis, most of the system in upheaval protesting against an organization called the Extraplanetary Defense Force. Riots across Annah and Doyahn are met with lethal force using old-style automatic weapons. System wide martial law has been declared by the various planetary governors to retain order.

5. A large amount of encrypted radio traffic has been detected near where the warp trail of the Hawking ends. Mass densitometers can detect the Hawking’s mass (of something approximating it as well many other vessels in it’s general area. The crew can draw it’s own conclusions.

6. Dornathant V has a orbital station that appears to possess a Matter/Anti-Matter Reactor of truly horrifying power. A challenging role after a narrow scan indicates that they have stumbled across the secret of Total Matter annihilation and conversion, something that even Federation science (or anyone else for that matter) has never managed so far.

It should be horrifyingly obvious that the incursion of the Hawking at this point has caused some form of societal upheaval among the Dornthantii (the exact nature will need to be determined to attempt to correct the damage). Players at this point may wish to visit the Dornathantii to assure them that the Federation means no harm or attempt to assess the condition of the Hawking and determine a course of action.

[BouncyCaitian]

Section Three: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?: Salvaging the Hawking

At this point, the Ship’s Captain by rights, should be enforcing SOP with regard to technological contamination by the Federation of a pre-warp flight civilization. Arguments by the characters of the exact merits of this can be held, most of them legitimately, but defiance of an Admiral’s order should not be taken lightly by SFC and a hearing will be held of the crew do not attempt some form of technology retrieval.

The ship can travel within 10,000km of the Hawkings position near a collection of asteroids reliably keeping themselves out of radar and ladar sight using the asteroid field as cover, and as long as they create a course that looks random (Ballistic courses will draw suspicion from local EDF ships that are keeping an eye on the asteroid field from potential enemy forces).

Once upon the area, the ship can make subspace scans without drawing suspicion, assuming the player has the foresight to adjust the ships sensors (normal TN) not to emit radar/ladar or other scans that could be detected. If they haven’t, the EDF vessels will be a flurry of activity as they attempt to spot the source of the unusual scan.

Assuming they don’t, they will find the reason the Hawking has not returned, the primary hull is half gone as one of the long, tubular vessels that the EDF uses appears to be sticking out of it. A quick scan of the EDF vessels will not indicate as to exactly why the two ships ended up this way. The EDF vessels don’t have even the most crude polarized hull plating, gravity control systems (uses rotation to achieve gravity) and materials technology does not appear particularly advanced (initally). By rights even if the two ships had run into each other, the EDF vessel should have folded like a wet paper bag.

To make matters worse, they can see that the Dornathantii have been busy scavenging components from the Hawking and moving them via EVA to large cargo vessels. The starboard warp nacelle can be seen being moved into a large carrier vehicle and the M/AM containment unit floats lazily 100 km below the fleet.

Communications will be picking up a lot of radio and laser traffic from the area and the UT after about ten minutes of observation will pick up several conversations of note:

Transmission #1:
“This is DH1272 to Enchinawha EVA Research Team #1. Dr. Hupteka, How are you progressing?
“This is EVA-RT1 to DH1272. Good Morning, Colonel Hitzok. I’m sorry to say we’ve not been able to make heads or tails of this scrap we’ve got floating out here. I’ve got Teams 2 through 5 on FOC detail right now. We don’t want to miss anything out here.
“Still no progress on entry into the vessel?
“We have, as part of your orders, attempted the use of Breaching Compound 12, oxy-las cutters, and several construction drones to no effect on the hull. Whatever it is this hull is made out of, we can’t even scratch it with what we have on hand. Wait. One moment. Sir, I have a report from Team Six.
“Patch them through.
“Hello? Am I on?
“This Colonel Hitzok, Leader Six, please identify yourself.
“Sorry, sir. This is Mission Specialist Second Class Huitzopectali. We’re currently experimenting with what appears to be an emergency bypass near the entry port we found on the forward hull near the impact point. Thought impact is perhaps an improper word. It looks melted and fused.
“Save it for the report, Specialist. What did you find?
“The scale is bigger than I expected, but I think it’s a manual cycler for an airlock. Reminds me of a back-up hydraulic pump for some security doors I’ve worked on.
“Very good, Specialist. What equipment do you require?
“Since none of the ‘bots are built for this sort of thing, sir, I could use Specialist Trant from the AV Maintenance Pool. He’s about the only one I can see budging this thing.

Transmission #2:
“This is Flight Officer Felna to DH 1272. I have secured against the ships ‘sail tower’ and am commencing EVA to the large hatch near the dorsal aft. I can see what appears to be remnants of writing. Perhaps the ship’s identifier? There’s a lot of carbon scoring on the hull. I estimate plus five minutes to contact with the hatch. My mag-boots aren’t holding as well.
“Watch you ass out there, Erma. I don’t want to be stuck raising your brat.”
“Very nice. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, Toki?”
“Your husband says ‘Hi’ and wants to know when you’ll be home. He says the riots are calming down now that services have been restored.
“I’ll be home when we’re done here. Ho-Hah! Someone Tell the General we’ve got a minor breech in the hatch. I can stick in a camera ‘bot if he wants.
“Go for it, girl. I’ll…oh, Hullo, sir.
“Felna, this is General Fothangar. Be very careful.
“I will, Sir. Just setting up my helmet link. Sending in probe. Are you receving?
“It’s fuzzy, Flight Officer. How’s your rad counter?”
“Well within tolerance, Sir. I’m making a chip back up of this in my suit….Oh…
“Felna?”
“Sir. We were way off. This isn’t a cargo bay. It’s a EVA bay. And I think those are the alien’s AV’s. They must have synthetic gravity. It looks to be about 5 decks in size I’d guess….Oh…Kai.
“Felna, you saw something?”
“Adjusting bot camera, sir. Do you see it?
“Kai, indeed, Felna. Someone wake up the Xenophys. We’ve got a body.
“Sir, do you think it could..?
“I’d advise you to hold that thought for the moment, Felna. Certain people might get ideas.

[BouncyCaitian]

Still adding and editing stuff for later sections, what I got so far.

[Jem'hadar]

Looks interesting so far.

When you're done w/ your scenario, do you think you could make it available as a pdf download?

[Tobian]

Looks good Bouncy.. I will get on it once I can.. my computer melted

[Cut]

Sounds nice But right now I don't see my group getting back to the playing table

[kridenow]

A question I would ask if I was playing this adventure :

Considering :
"They will be picking up a large amount of advanced radio, laser, maser, and other pre-subspace traffic from the systems secondary and tertiary planets, as well as radio traffic from areas in the systems asteroid belt. Which should give the player’s pause as the Hawking has apparently wandered into an advanced space-going society that has dominated at the very least it’s own system and hasn’t reported back"

and previously,

"They will find the [missing] ship was fitted with a long-range sensor pod, fitted with special sensors designed to detect and catalog gravitational anomalies for use by later starships"

I'd ask "How does it come the Hawking with long range sensors and supposed better sensor capacity ran into the inhabited system without a clue when we, less equipped, are able to detect the civilization activity ?"

Unless the Hawking has better dedicated, specialized sensors (which didn't help to detect the civilization) and either worst regular sensor capacity either the captain/crew missed the signals.
But I'd find odd a "sensor ship" would have less than regular sensor capacity and the captain/crew on a exploration overseeing the civilization signals might need an explanation.

Pierre

[BouncyCaitian]

actually, the explaination is forth coming as I scribble this out. As the players have not been able to retrieve the Hawkings logs as of yet, your question is entirely appropriate.

[Alex]

Very good scenario so far. Looking forward to the plot twists that make it more than it is now.

I had problems when you said "for TOS Era+". I imagined TOS Era. Then I assumed by the + you might mean TOS-Movie Era. Instead I see you using a TNG Era ship with a registry in the 65000s. Maybe you should have said TNG Era or even Early TNG Era (the Nebula doesn't appear to be much older than Enterprise-D based on in-episode info).

[BouncyCaitian]

D'oh! Erm....alter registry numbers to taste

[Alex]

What happens next? I'm hanging on the edge of my seat. It's been far to long since you said "more later".

[kridenow]

I agree. I am also waiting for more !

Pierre

[BouncyCaitian]

Sorry...got busy with work. Working on it as we speak

At this point, there players are going to have several questions/problems to deal with. Firstly, there is the question of how the Hawking collided with a low-tech starship and was not able to transmit a warning to Starfleet or for that matter, activate it’s self-destruct to prevent technology capture. Secondly, they have several EVA Teams going into the wreckage to scavenge technology to neutralize or perhaps initiate First Contact procedures. Several nuggets are listed below:


Transmission#1: Dr. Hupteka, (a mustelid) and the rest of his recon team are currently attempting to figure out how to open an presumed (correctly) EVA hatch on the primary hull of the Hawking, but the relative scale and strength needed is beyond the doctors normal crew. So while the team wait for a entry team from the DH 1272, the are isolating and bagging Free Floating Objects from the ship for analysis. Hupteka is currently wandering the hull attempting to make sense of warning labels on escape pod hatches. A remote access (challenging difficulty) of the still functioning ships systems will indicate that the hatches electronic locking systems are off line and that simple manual cycling of the hatch will give the locals quick access to the ship’s computer core (still online, and unfortunately, the ships recognition protocols are offline, and so open to anyone who speaks the computer (translation matrix is still online)).

Beaming inside the hull is out of the question as radiation, while not lethal, renders the transporter, risky at best, deadly at worst. Also free floating hydrogen fuel from the alien starship makes the use of phasers or other energy based weapons a suicidal maneuver. After a scan it is currently thought that beaming in on the underside of the primary hull near one of the phaser emitters (to which the locals probes, are not currently monitoring).

Normally the players would be able to enter from the bottom of the ship but due to the angle of entry of the alien vessel (which now upon further examination is actually fused to the hull), the hatch is somewhere inside the shattered hull of the alien ship. The current solution would be to crawl up along the hull and get close enough to the doctors team and place small radio jamming devices near one of the power conduits.

EVA maneuvers will be need to be conducted in zero-g as the ships artificial gravity system has given out. Luckily for the players there is a large amount of scrap floating about the area and they will have cover from loose objects to mess with local visual and radar that might pick them up (TN bonus to be determined by GM)

Things that could go wrong as they get nearer the examination site is that one of the local worker bots used to sift through scrap could spot the players (if they’re not taking care to be stealthy).

Attempting to hack the bots security would be an immensely bad idea as it would be attract the attention of the entity that exists within the local datagrid referred to those who know of it called ‘The Net’ (see cultural write up later in the module) as well as the bot’s semi-smart frame that runs it. If this happens, the research team will become nervous as the bot indicates that something attempted communicating with it, but it has no idea what it was.

The players could attempt First Contact, but given the nervousness of the recon team, this could be also bad, as the Locals have had absolutely NO xeno-contact previously, except the examination of a ‘Creator’ vessel, to which they have derived relatively recent innovations from. And some rather unpleasant cultural memes (think a rather bad mixture of 1950’s Cold War style Paranoia and pulp magazine ‘Mars Needs Women’ nonsense and you’re beginning to get the idea). Also, those that are armed are carrying advanced projectile (8mm dual purpose dart-cored slug throwers adapted for space) and might fire if they see the crew (as they think everyone on the ship is dead and the crew might be from another ship coming to collect the remains (insert worst fear here)). The players might need to be reminded that the Locals still appear to be pre-warp civilization, therefore FC is proscribed.

If the players decided to bypass the crew and head for a hatch that’s available, it will take them about a half hour if they move carefully and use floating scrap for cover (which is what the local bots are being used to collect and remove), they should reach an emergency hatch and be able to cycle the hatch manually or use a power pack to open it.
If they think to listen in on the locals, they will pick up the following conversation

“Doctor, I think these Xeno’s use base ten for a numerical system instead of Base Eight.”
“Really? How did you determine that?”
“The way this external keypad is set up, look at the extra characters. They seem to follow the general form of the other characters. But these on the lowest tier on either side are far too different to be numbers. At least to me, anyway.”
“Let’s not make assumptions too hastily, but you may have a point. What is the progress on the door?”
I’ve had to improvise a mechanical sledge to get things moving. This mechanical pump looks to be frozen up. I’m guessing whatever lubricant they use needs to be primed. We might want to stand back if any atmosphere is still in the airlock too. It’ll about half an hour before I think I’ll have everything braced properly.”
“Very good. Anything else.”
“Yeah. The ILR is going to have a fit when the find out about this. And so is ConFed Central.”
“That’s not your worry, specialist.”
“Yes, Doctor”


note: this is a roughing for the moment. I'll be introducing ideas for each transmission and how the players can deal with it, as well as ideas for contacting the local fleet, possibly deal with the home world right of the bat, and many other options. please excuse my mess